


The Night the Joker Died

by Romiress



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Mystery, mentions of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 19:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20588207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romiress/pseuds/Romiress
Summary: An Arkham-verse Mystery.Batman gets a call he knows he's not prepared for: The Joker's been found dead at Arkham. But the more he looks, the more the mysteries stack up, and Bruce begins to wonder if he wants to find the answers...





	The Night the Joker Died

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all my beta readers who helped get this fic to the state it's in!

Bruce gets the call almost thirty minutes late. He's in the middle of dinner when his phone screams an alert, and he snatches it up, already on his way to the cave.

"Bruce," Barbara blurts, "I'm sorry, I just-"

She sounds nervous, and Bruce pushes it aside. Whatever's happening, he needs her focused.

"Report," he says, hoping to snap her back to reality as he heads down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Someone bypassed Arkham security," she says. "Whoever did it was really good, so I missed whatever signs they might have left. I was on the porch when they alarm actually went off."

"How long?"

"Alert went out ten minutes ago," she says. "Police are already there."

Which means he's going to be late. He's going to be arriving  _ after _ Jim and his men, and considering how upset she sounds...

"Who got out?"

Barbara is silent for so long that Bruce wonders if the phone's lost connection.

"Barbara?" He prompts as he dresses, already readying himself to go even if he doesn't know what he's going  _ too. _

"Sorry, I -" She falters, sounding uncertain. "No one escaped. Someone broke in, and-"

She falters again. She's so obviously shaken, which is unlike her. Barbara's normally professional. In control. She's been working with him for long enough that for her to actually be  _ shaken _ feels alarming and raises every red flag Bruce knows of.

"Oracle," he says. Even if she called him on his personal number to start, this is work now. Business. He's hoping hearing her codename will drag her back into the right mindset, and it does seem to help just a bit.

"Someone killed the Joker, B," she says. "Someone murdered him."

Bruce falters. He shouldn't, but he does. It doesn't feel real. It feels like someone's playing a trick on him, pulling the rug out from under him without him even knowing there's a joke at all.

"You're sure?" He already knows the answer, but he asks anyway.

"I'm sure," she says.

He drops himself into the driver's seat and tries not to think at all. There's too many possibilities and all of them are bad.

"I've dispatched Robin to Arkham," Barbara says. "But I haven't had time to fill him in."

"Brief him while I drive," Bruce says.

"Do you want Nightwing?" Barbara asks.

"No," Bruce says. "Tell him to stay in Bludhaven."

He turns his attention back to the road and makes it his priority to get there as fast as possible.

Jim's standing at the entrance, a cigarette between his lips. He's been an on-again off-again smoker as long as Bruce has known him, but he's also been clean for a few months, which makes the appearance of the cigarette particularly noticeable. It's not even his particular brand, which means he borrowed it from someone out of sheer desperation.

"That bad?" Bruce asks as he climbs out of the front seat, locking up the batmobile behind him.

"Worse," Jim says. "Whatever you think you're walking into, you're not prepared for it."

Jim turns out to be right. He's expecting a dead clown in his cell, shot in the head and dead as can be. What he gets is a body that's been brutalized so badly he isn't even able to confirm who they are from a glance, and is forced to check the skin color on the hands to get anything close to a verification. There's marks on his wrists consistent with being bound, but no sign of the rope or whatever was used to actually restrain him.

It isn't just a murder. It's something else, something brutal. This was  _ personal, _ and whoever killed the Joker made sure he hurt before he died.

He makes himself look. Makes himself deal with things clinically, even as his stomach churns. The Joker's skull's been caved in, which is probably the cause of death, but there's major damage other places too. Bruce finds defensive wounds on the hands, but there's nothing to scrape under his nails, and it doesn't look like the Joker had much of a chance.

"Oh Jesus," Tim says from behind him, and Bruce glances back just for an excuse to not look at the brutalized corpse in front of him.

"Robin," he says. "Tell me what you see."

Tim hesitates, which says a lot about the state of the body. They've both seen some pretty brutalized bodies before, but this is near the top.

"Someone really hated him," Tim says, and Jim snorts off to the side. Bruce realizes he's still got his cigarette, something that would have no doubt got him a talking to if not for the situation.

"Everyone hated him," Jim says. "I don't know how you'd even make a suspect list. Who has a motive? Everyone. Who has a reason? Everyone."

"So you look at the other details," Bruce says. "What else?"

Tim bends down, inspecting the body carefully. He's a good detective, and Bruce gives him time.

"Looks like they used a weapon," he says. "Blunt. Fairly small. My first instinct is something like a police baton in terms of size and shape."

Jim glances down to his own baton and lets out a grunt.

"Some of the wounds are more consistent with a struggle. I'd say he fought his attacker, lost the fight, got tied up, and then was killed while still bound."

"Gordon," Bruce says. "What have your people learned?"

Jim pulls out a notepad, flipping through it as he searches for relevant details.

"Maybe forty minutes ago, someone accessed Arkham's security system from off-site," Jim explains. "Everything went into full lock down, but no alarm went out. Five minutes later, all the lights in the building cut. Security was focused on regaining control of the security room and working to restore power, and didn't realize what had happened until just before the police arrived."

"What about the inmates? Did they hear anything?" Bruce asks. There are cells close enough they'd had to have heard things.

"Haven't asked," Jim says, tucking his notebook away. "Like I said, when we were called, it was because someone cut the power and set off an alarm. Didn't find out it was a murder investigation until we arrived."

Bruce turns away. There's a feeling of dread there, uncertainty. Something is wrong about the situation, and he can't quite put his finger on what. Maybe it's the fact that the whole thing feels too organized. Nothing about this was spontaneous. And yet the extreme brutality of what happened is usually associated with a crime of passion that happens in the heat of the moment.

The entire thing was meticulously planned, all so that someone could take out their anger on the Joker.

The cell closest to the Joker is the Riddler's, a fact which makes things much easier, but also much harder. Nigma has a much better understanding of what happened in the intensive care unit than someone like Zsasz, but he's also going to be much harder to get that information out of.

His stomach sinks even lower when he reaches the cell and finds Nigma waiting for him, his hands clasped together behind his back. He looks  _ pleased, _ which doesn't bode well.

"Nigma," he says. "You saw what happened." He guesses the best thing he can do is stroke Nigma's ego, and hope that he'll let something slip.

"Batman!" He says. "It is so good to see you. I was wondering when you'd show up to face my final riddle."

Fantastic. Riddler's either responsible or he  _ thinks _ he's responsible. Neither is good.

"And here I was under the impression you'd been imprisoned the whole time, Nigma," Bruce says. "Quite impressive that you managed to sneak out, cut the power, and murder the Joker without ever leaving your cell."

Nigma wags a finger at him.

"Come now, Batman. They don't call it the master _ mind _ for nothing. I have to say, this is my masterpiece. The fact that I managed to pull all this together impresses even myself!"

He looks so damned pleased with himself that Bruce wonders if Arkham's made even the slightest bit of progress with him.

"If this is your riddle," Bruce says, "then I'm sure you have a clue for me."

"Of course," Nigma says. "Ask me anything about the events that happened, and I will provide you with only the truth... from the perspective of a completely ordinary patient, of course. I can hardly give you the answers, but I am quite confident even with such a sizeable handicap, you won't solve it."

That feels... generous. Nigma has always tended to overestimate his own genius (and underestimate everyone else's), but just giving him the answers... He's always been intent on rubbing his victory in people's noses, but this seems extreme.

"Did you see who killed the Joker?"

"Only a silhouette as they passed by my cell," Nigma says.

"Did they say anything?"

"He certainly said something, but I couldn't hear it from here."

"Were they carrying a weapon?"

Nigma gives a sigh.

"Can you truly not think of any more interesting questions?" Nigma asks. "Pretending to be only as smart as the average patient here is exhausting."

Bruce grunts, running through what he does and doesn't know, and stumbles on something he  _ doesn't  _ know, which Nigma might be willing to answer.

"...How did they get into his cell?"

"Aha," Nigma says, his smile widening. "Now you're beginning to follow the clues. Someone must have opened the cell for them."

That explains his earlier concerns. It's not one person with two vastly different styles. It's two people, each with their own.

"Why?"

"As I said, I am playing the part of a completely ordinary patient," Nigma says with a flourish. "They would hardly know the answer to your question."

Bruce grunts and turns away, leaving Nigma to his puzzle.

"B," Tim says without looking up. He's bent down in the entrance to the Joker's cell, inspecting something on the ground. "I think there's something weird here."

"Weird in what way?"

"I can't figure out why, but I think the body was moved  _ after _ it was already dead."

"To display?" Bruce asks. It's possible, maybe even likely. The body was propped up so that it was staring at anyone who entered the hallway, a grisly sight.

"Maybe," Tim says. "I'm getting Oracle to run some blood samples and confirm what we already know."

It's possible that it isn't the Joker. That the whole thing was set  _ up _ by the Joker. But that doesn't work with Nigma's clues, and the brutality seems... excessive.

His gut tells him that the body in front of them is the real thing.

"Anything?" Jim asks as he returns, his cigarette gone. Bruce notes that he's making a point of not looking at the body at all, and considering what happened to Barbara, he can't blame him.

"At least two suspects," Bruce says. "Or one suspect and someone from within the Arkham staff assisting. One of them cut outside contact and looped the security footage while the other went inside. The cells all remained on lockdown, but just before he was killed, the Joker's cell opened."

"Allowing our perp to take him out," Jim says, and Bruce nods.

"Considering the timeline, it takes about five minutes to get in and five minutes to get out from here. ...That's like twenty extra minutes they spent at this cell. There's no way they spent  _ that _ long killing him, right?" Tim asks, looking up at him. He's seeking answers that Bruce doesn't have.

"Riddler says he's responsible," Bruce says. "But it's hard to say if that's the truth, or if he's just inserting himself into someone else's plan."

He glances to the Riddler to find him pressed up against the entrance to his cell, leering at them 

"B," Oracle says in his ear, and Bruce reaches up, pressing his fingers to the earpiece.

"I'm here."

"All signs point to that being the real Joker," she says. "So that's one thing."

Someone—probably two people—bypassed Arkham Security and made it all the way here just to beat Joker to death. The fact that he's all but confirmed that only makes  _ more _ questions. He's solved nothing. He doesn't understand.

"Change places," Bruce says. "Speak to Nigma. I'll investigate the body."

Robin nods at him, happy to be away from the corpse, and heads towards Nigma.

The body is the same as it was when he last looked. The damage is still extreme, the blood and gore still all over. Now that he knows what to look for, though, he's able to confirm Tim's findings: the body was moved post-mortem, propping it up for some reason that Bruce has yet to discover.

The truth is that there might not  _ be _ a reason. The entire attack was highly personal. Propping the body up might just be a part of that.

He just doesn't want it to be true. The whole thing feels very  _ professional, _ as passionate as it was. Normally he's found more clues. Normally he has a better idea of what he's dealing with. Instead, he's coming up almost blank.

He runs through the clues again, and one catches in his brain as he straightens up, heading back to Nigma and interrupting Tim's questioning.

"Nigma," he says. "How long was the Joker alive?"

Nigma's expression tells him that he's guessed right. This is important. His expression is like a chessmaster whose opponent has just spotted their gambit coming, but who's too late to actually counter it.

"Oh, quite a while," Nigma says. "He was chattering away for  _ easily _ a good twenty minutes, and then things got violent."

Tim exchanges a look with him, and Bruce turns away, heading back to the cell.

Something else happened: there's some other mystery at play here. There's no explanation he can think of for was happening during those twenty minutes, and the idea of someone tolerating a bound Joker for twenty minutes while doing nothing makes no sense.  _ Something _ happened in that time, and the only possible clue he has is the way the body was moved after the Joker was killed.

"For the record," Tim says as he joins him, "Nigma was as vague as he ever was. He's claiming credit for the whole thing, but I got him to admit that he just started it. Apparently he..." Tim sighs, and Bruce can practically  _ hear _ his eyes roll behind him. "...told a little birdy something important. He wouldn't say what that was. You know how he is."

He does know how Nigma is, but it doesn't bring him any sort of peace.

"Gordon," he says, doing what he can to keep the creeping dread from showing in his posture. "We need to check under the body."

"Give me a few minutes," Jim says. "We already took photos and did what we could. Warden Sharp wants the body removed sooner rather than later."

He stands to the side with Tim and watches as the body is removed, loaded in bits and pieces into a bag to be taken to the coroners. Bruce isn't expecting a grand reveal. He's not expecting a note to be found under the body.

He's not disappointed. There's nothing under the Joker's body but more blood, and Bruce stares down at it and tries not to think at all about  _ whose _ blood it is.

He can't. He can't let himself think of the crime as  _ the Joker's murder. _ It has to keep being  _ the murder. _ If it's just a murder, he can focus on solving it. He won't have to think about  _ who _ was killed. Won't have to address the fact that he doesn't feel an ounce of sadness over his death.

All he really feels is a quiet joy that he'll never hurt anyone again.

"Okay, I'm stumped," Tim says. "Someone broke in here, hung around the cell, killed the Joker, and then.... What? Propped up his body to spook us?"

There's something missing. Something right on the edge of his perception. Something he's missing.

Did they place something on the body? Do something with it? Or is it something with the cell itself...

He reaches down, touching a part of the floor, and knocks.

It sounds wrong. Not hollow the way a thin wall might sound, but still  _ wrong. _

"Oracle," he says. "What's positioned under the cell?"

"Hold on," she says. "Let me access their security system." It doesn't take more than a minute, and she sounds more certain when she follows up. "Nothing. According to the blueprints, there shouldn't be anything under the cell but a large cement pad that was used as the base for the asylum."

Every second he feels more tense, his mind speeding up as he works through the logic of it. Someone spending more than ten minutes in the Joker's cell and then killing him. Multiple people being involved. The personal rage there.

But more than anything else, Nigma's choice of words.

Not that he  _ can't _ solve it, but that he won't.

He doesn't give Jim any warning as he places a small explosive on the floor of the Joker's cell, stepping back and detonating it. Jim curses, hopping mad as he heads towards it, but his anger falters when he sees the  _ hole _ that Bruce has exposed.

There's probably a real entrance. There's probably a way down. He doesn't have the patience for that. He simply steps forward, dropping down the five or so feet to where the stairs pass under the hole, and heads down them as Tim leans over the hole.

"B?" He calls. "What...." Tim trails off as he sees the space the explosion has revealed. It's not a small cache, but a whole  _ room, _ a staircase that obviously predates the building above it.

Bruce refuses to answer as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, reaching for the door and stopping before he can actually touch the handle.

He can't. He can't do it, because then it'll be real. He doesn't  _ want _ it to be real.

"B?" Tim calls as he comes down the steps. "What the hell is this?"

"It's where he kept him," Bruce says. He makes himself say the words, even if they hurt. Each one feels like a knife being dragged through his body. "This is where the tape was made."

Tim doesn't ask what he's talking about. He already knows.

This is the place where Jason Todd was kept. This is where he was tortured, deep beneath Arkham. Now, Bruce has solved a mystery that predates Nigma's involvement: how did the Joker kill Jason Todd while still confined in Arkham?

Which means he knows what's on the other side of the door.

He can't make himself look. He can't make himself open the door. Instead, he turns away, going back up the way they came. He knows the answer to the riddle. He knows what's on the other side of the door. There's nothing to be gained from opening it and seeing the place where his son was tortured.

Where his son died.

His son's body is no longer there. Someone came to this place, killed the man who hurt him, and took him away. Bruce didn't. He sat at home, oblivious to what was happening.

Tim scrambles after him, but Bruce pays him no mind. He leaves the hidden room behind, walking past Jim as he heads for Nigma's cell, feeling nothing but loathing at the man's obvious delight.

He knows what happened here. He knows who was responsible: who killed the Joker and went down to the secret room to retrieve the body below. He knows who helped them get in, and how it all played out. 

"The culprit didn't leave alone, did they?" Bruce asks. 

He already knows the answer to his question. He knows why Nigma described it as a riddle he  _ won't _ solve, not one he  _ can't. _

"Why, Batman, however did you figure that out?" Nigma asks, a twinkle in his eye.

Bruce can't look at him.

"You win, Nigma," he says, and then he turns away, refusing to look at him again as he leaves Arkham behind.

He's failed in every way.


End file.
